Peter McDonald's painting depicting an artist slashing a canvas has won this year's John Moores contemporary painting prize, it was announced today.

Fontana, by the Tokyo-born McDonald, reimagines the working practice of Italian artist Lucio Fontana, who made a series of works featuring canvases with slashes and holes. The painting, chosen from 40 works shortlisted for the £25,000 prize, was described by a judge as "one of the most inventive paintings I've seen".

McDonald, 35, who studied art at Central Saint Martins and the Royal Academy Schools, said today he felt "ecstatic, very happy and shocked".

"All the other works were really good so it was an added surprise," he said, speaking from the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. "I hoped the judges would appreciate the various layers [in Fontana]. I think of it as a painter's painting."

The four runners-up were Julian Brain, Geraint Evans, Grant Foster and Neal Jones.

This year's jurors included artists Jake and Dinos Chapman, art critic Sacha Craddock, and painters Graham Crowley and Paul Morrison. Artist Crowley said the winning painting "acts as a tantalising and provocative glimpse into the way we think".

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones, however, was underwhelmed by this year's shortlist. He wrote on his art blog that it represented "another nail in the coffin of the greatest western art form … What I see in the shortlisted works is more of the same deadening irony, disbelief and smallness of mind that has reduced painting in modern Britain to a stale, repetitive, self-parodic eunuch."

All 40 shortlisted works will be shown at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool from September 20 2008 to January 4 2009. The gallery is purchasing McDonald's winning painting.

The prize, now in its 50th year, is part of the Liverpool Biennale, and has previously been awarded to artists David Hockney and Richard Hamilton.